Your Right to Know

Pickerington is taking the lead in Fairfield County toward more regional cooperation in
providing government services, starting with trash collection and maintenance of drinking-water
storage tanks.

Pooling purchasing power is intended to give local governments more bang for their buck,
resulting in savings to be passed along to residents.

Gov. John Kasich has encouraged shared services and group purchasing as ways that local
communities can economize while dealing with cuts that state leaders have made to the
local-government fund.

“The state is stressing regionalism, and we are getting ahead of the curve,” said Pickerington
City Council President Gavin Blair.

Pickerington and Baltimore, which currently have different companies collecting their trash,
recently sought bids as a team. The approach paid off. Households will save money when the new
contracts begin on Jan. 1.

Rumpke, the lowest among five bidders, will collect the trash weekly for $8.75 per month. That’s
down from the current $12.17 per month in Baltimore, which now uses Waste Management, and from the
$9.63 per month in Pickerington, which currently has a contract with Rumpke.

Violet Township, which surrounds Pickerington, doesn’t have a trash district, so it couldn’t
collaborate. Up to six companies currently collect trash there. Different garbage trucks grind
through the same subdivisions on different days, a setup that has endured because many homeowners
want to hire their own hauler.

Township Administrator Bill Yaple said, however, that he plans to tell some homeowner
associations about the money they potentially could save if they join Pickerington and Baltimore on
the shared trash-pickup contract.

Baltimore, Pickerington, Lancaster, Groveport, Fairfield County and Delaware, meanwhile, are
hoping to save money by collectively bringing all their water-tank maintenance work to one
company.

State law allows governments to award such multiyear, professional-services contracts without
competitive bidding.

Plans call for Caldwell Tanks Inc., of Louisville, Ky., to inspect and maintain each government’s
collection of water-storage tanks under separate, individual multiyear agreements, while giving
each a group discount because they brought their business to the table as a regional group.

The contracts likely will range from three to 10 years. They will allow for level, predictable
budgeting in tank maintenance, said Pickerington City Manager Bill Vance. He came up with the idea
to bundle both the water-tank maintenance and the trash job with other communities to see if they
could get a better deal.

Bundled buying makes sense, said Lancaster Mayor Dave Smith.

Lancaster and other cities have been buying road salt, vehicles and other goods for years on the
state bid, which gives them a better price, he said.

“As we have success on water-tank maintenance, we might think about what else we buy that we
might be able to leverage as a buying group,” Smith said.

The regional approach also is economical for Caldwell, which maintains water tanks nationwide,
because it mobilizes workers in one area who work on multiple water tanks, said Ron Quail, the
company’s regional sales manager for Ohio. The reduced costs will allow the company to pass on
discounts to the participating governments, depending on how many sign up.

Baltimore expects to save up to 15 percent compared with what it would have spent to go it
alone, said Village Administrator Scott Brown.

Delaware, which now spends $10,000 to $15,000 annually to maintain its three water tanks, also
anticipates saving up to 15 percent, said Brad Stanton, the city’s director of public
utilities.

Also, he said, “We’ll see a much more robust maintenance program,” including regularly scheduled
visual inspections, washing and painting their inside and outside, and touching up rust spots. The
maintenance also will extend the lives of the steel tanks, he predicted.